Are You A FOODIE?

Is technology producing a generation of idiots?

Recently I watched a documentary called “Crackberry‘d: The Truth About Information Overload”. It follows studies showing how our obsession with information delivering technologies is having a noticeable, adverse effect on our intelligence and is negatively impacting our productivity. This counter-intuitive statement is backed up by research which also shows that the more companies invest in technology for their workers, the sharper the drop in productivity of those same workers.

Skeptical, I took the Crackberry test. I recorded a segment of the show that sets out to prove that humans cannot in fact actually multi-task, and that the myth of multi-tasking is doing more harm than good. In the test were two basketball teams. One wearing white, and one wearing black. I was asked to count the number of times the white team passed the ball. They mixed it up as the teams wove in and out of each other, but I got the answer right. I was so proud…until I was asked if I spotted the witch walking right through the center of the scene. I had not. Holy cow. Humans cannot mult-task. Ask anyone who has been the victim of a cell phone car wreck.

So where does this leave us? After all, companies are not going to stop cranking out products and neither are marketers going to keep our best interests at heart when it comes to feeding our tech addictions. The only way out is to do it ourselves. “Step away from the Blackberry and back up to your pen and paper, slowly!”

What educators are seeing makes this very alarming. A significant drop in attention spans, we’re talking severe, to the point where grades are falling at a statistically significant rate. By training our brains to scan messages and then move on to the next task quickly 8 hours a day (for kids think texting), we are beating back the ability to think deeply about any one particular thing for an extended period of time.

If you were interrupted by an e-mail, a text message, or a SKYPE video call at anytime while reading this article, you might want to check your online calendar to see if you can schedule some time to unplug.